> It's not entirely clear to me why it's important that I know somebody is a "queer sapiosexual" or whatever else. But there are clearly a lot of people who think such things are very important.
The people who think it's most important of all are the people who disapprove of it. If we're living in an era where everyone thinks the details of their gender and sexuality are important, that's not because of hipsters in Brooklyn, it's because of fundamentalists in Kansas.
>In a way we can see this in how protest movements are labeled - it used to be that they were labeled by their goals or the problems they were trying to solve, like the "Civil Rights Movement" or the "Conservation Movement." But now we label things by their identity.
I think this might be a rather hasty generalization. What about the peasants' revolt, or the women's march on Versailles? And there are lots of protest movements today that aren't labeled based on identity, such as most of the worldwide protests against Trump.
> If we're living in an era where everyone thinks the details of their gender and sexuality are important, that's not because of hipsters in Brooklyn, it's because of fundamentalists in Kansas.
I'm pretty sure no Kansas fundamentalists care (or even know) about subtle distinctions between sexualities. It's not like you can tell a socially conservative person, "I'm not actually gay, I consider myself queer and I'm attracted to personalities, not genders." and have them say, "My mistake."
I can't say that I follow the news on identity politics closely, but my understanding from liberal sources is that conservatives believe that people should use the bathroom assigned to their biological sex, and they don't know or care about whether someone is post-op or pre-op or genderqueer or any of the other gradations of gender. So, again, it seems nonsensical to explain the subtle gradations of gender identity and sexual orientation that have emerged in recent years (i.e. past 30-40 years, say) by saying that conservatives were requiring this information somehow.
>and they don't know or care about whether someone is post-op or pre-op or genderqueer or any of the other gradations of gender.
But to enforce the policy you have to care about precisely this, because there are plenty of transmen who look like men and transwomen who look like women. So in practice you have to go around asking every man/woman in the bathroom whether they have a penis/vagina. If you "don't care" whether someone is genderqueer or not, then simply let men use the men's bathroom and women use the women's bathroom, without bothering to check their genitals first.
Again, my understanding is that they don't care what gender you say you are or where you are on the physical spectrum, they care about your gender at birth. This does not necessitate anything further than, "I was born male" or "I was born female", referring to biological sex, except in edge cases like chromosomal abnormalities and ambiguous genitalia. Handling cases of biological gender ambiguities is not covered by the emerging vocabulary around the gender spectrum, so again, those distinctions are entirely meaningless to conservatives.
If your hypothesis were true and these increasingly precise distinctions of sexual and gender identity are a response to conservatives, why did they emerge only after liberal attitudes became prevalent enough that people could openly embrace these identities? One would expect that if they cared about these subtleties, these differences would have been more important when the conservative viewpoint was near universal.
I think maybe you’re not picturing how such a regulation would work in practice. Suppose someone who looks like a woman goes into the women’s bathroom. Do you ask them if they have a penis, or do you just let them use the bathroom? To enforce the regulation that people have to use the bathroom corresponding to their biological sex, you would have to continually ask people about their genitalia. In other words, you’d have to continually take an interest in whether any given woman is a transwoman or a cis woman.
Also, I didn’t quite say that increasingly precise distinctions of sexual and general identity are a response to conservatives. I said that it’s because of conservatives that these distinctions are thought to be (and in practice are) very important. If we lived in some kind of free-wheeling hippy society, then these aspects of people would be of the same level of interest as, say, their dietary preferences.
As things currently stand, if you are a woman with a penis, there are lots of people ready and waiting to tell you that you're not really a woman. It's hardly surprising that transwomen take their gender identity very seriously when it's constantly under attack. Nor is it surprising that they construct new categories (e.g. 'transwoman') when the existing categories are so rigidly policed.
> I think maybe you’re not picturing how such a regulation would work in practice. Suppose someone who looks like a woman goes into the women’s bathroom. Do you ask them if they have a penis, or do you just let them use the bathroom?
If you're trying to reason about what social conservatives think, it probably doesn't help to concoct some strawman half-LGBT half-social conservative ideology. A social conservative ideology doesn't have the dilemma you describe because, for them, gender expression should conform to sex.
Any...
> interest in whether any given woman is a transwoman or a cis woman
...was foisted on social conservatives from outside. They don't have an innate interest or need for such finely-graded labels.
Conservatives, if they’re in favor of restricting bathroom use based on biological gender, have to decide whether or not they want to enforce this regulation. Enforcing it requires attending to the difference between cis women and transwomen. So clearly they do have the dilemma I described.
> Enforcing it requires attending to the difference between cis women and transwomen. So clearly they do have the dilemma I described.
Conservatives of the flavor you are talking about consider trans-women to be men. They don't need to differentiate because they are trying to impose a simpler rule than that. In practice, if they wanted to enforce their rule, they could just require ID to use a toilet and require that the ID specify gender at birth (as verified by birth certificate). The current state of the person's genitals does not have to play into it.
Obviously enforcing such a rule (or really any bathroom rule) strictly would be incredibly annoying and basically pointless, and in practice it would be enforced about as intermittently as almost any other rules, but at no point do they actually care whether or not you currently have a penis.
>Conservatives of the flavor you are talking about consider trans-women to be men.
This point is not lost on me. I noted it in several of the posts that you're replying to.
>They don't need to differentiate
To enforce the rule, they need to differentiate between transwomen and cis women, since they do not consider the former to be women, and think that cis women, but not transwomen, should be allowed to use the women's restroom. You acknowledge this yourself in other parts of your post.
>In practice, if they wanted to enforce their rule, they could just require ID to use a toilet and require that the ID specify gender at birth (as verified by birth certificate). The current state of the person's genitals does not have to play into it.
This is a weird and pedantic objection. You're saying that they care about whether or not the person in question was born with a penis rather than whether or not they currently have one. Ok, but so what? Then you have to ask everyone who goes to the women's bathroom whether they were born with a penis.
Having a good deal of familiarity with the sort of people you are talking about, I'd say that your understanding is almost exactly the opposite of the case. It depends a little on exactly which group of Kansas fundamentalists you are talking about, but the standard view is that things gayness or transexuality are not biological identities but character flaws. There is a common belief that homosexuality is a side effect sexual license. Much of the importance of a gay 'identity' or a transexual 'identity' is in reaction to just this attitude. Homosexuals find the need to emphasize that their homosexuality is inbuilt and not some moral failing and so turn it into an identity.
"The people who think it's most important of all are the people who disapprove of it."
Social conservatives don't want transwomen using the women's bathrooms because they don't think that they are actually women. That's the only distinction that they care about: biological sex. Everything else is fiction to them.
Bear in mind that this is a simplification of the stances of millions of people, all of whom are different. Some will more readily admit to the existence of transpeople and homosexuals.
I'm not sure where we disagree. As you say, conservatives think that the difference between cis women and transwomen is very important, as they believe that transwomen are not really women.
Which seems pretty odd considering that with the exception of urinals, toilets themselves are enclosed in cubicles anyway. It seems kind of weird that they even segregate bathrooms... if they did away with urinals, all we'd be really sharing are sinks anyway. Though, I've heard horror stories about the state of women's bathrooms. I've never seen the inside of one. So perhaps they should remain separate XD
The desire there was to provide women and boys with safe spaces more than to discriminate against anyone. It's a protective instinct, not an oppressive one.
I'm not saying women are right to think all men are potential rapists or something, but there used to be a system in place to help with that issue. Now, what? I guess women need to hang outside the restroom until it seems safe? Or always go in groups?
Maybe we'll see more single-person restrooms going forward.
Anyway, point being, it's easy and reductionist to boil complex human emotions down to bigotry. I think the "classic bathroom rules" had some good points to them that we haven't replaced.
>The desire there was to provide women and boys with safe spaces more than to discriminate against anyone.
But that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. How would preventing transpeople from using the bathrooms that align with their gender identity make anyone safer? Is there a single recorded incident of a cis woman being raped by a transwoman in a bathroom?
Also, the effect on boys is that they'll be sharing bathrooms with transwomen instead of with transmen. From the bigot's point of view, that ought to make boys less safe (as they think that transwomen are "really" men and transmen "really" women, so that transwomen are more likely to be rapists). It's telling that the supposed justification in terms of safety isn't even internally consistent.
You misunderstand. The issue isn't trans people who are good citizens. It's bad actors that have a new loophole.
The mechanism ("no men in the ladies room") has been removed, so there's no longer a mechanism for the assistant manager of a Target to help his female customers relax and have a safe space to take care of things. That safety may now only provided after some sort of leering, proposal, or assault has already taken place.
Also, for the record, I don't think much of this makes sense. If we were objectively worried about safety, we would focus on driving less and slower and locking up swimming pools. Stranger danger is largely overblown. That being said, I've seen particular things where particular men (almost always men) harass particular women (almost always women) and in most cases there's not much the victim can do about it. This is more about concerns along those lines.
It's not clear to me any more what point you're trying to make. You seem to acknowledge that there isn't actually any safety issue with allowing transwomen to use the women's bathroom.
For the record I do think you're quite right that it's the forces trying to impose some sort of quasi-traditionalism helped give rise to some of the label/identity stuff, and also for the record I think my own claim about labels and identity over time is a very hasty and quite an over-generalization. (It's not like I went and did any research.)
The people who think it's most important of all are the people who disapprove of it. If we're living in an era where everyone thinks the details of their gender and sexuality are important, that's not because of hipsters in Brooklyn, it's because of fundamentalists in Kansas.
>In a way we can see this in how protest movements are labeled - it used to be that they were labeled by their goals or the problems they were trying to solve, like the "Civil Rights Movement" or the "Conservation Movement." But now we label things by their identity.
I think this might be a rather hasty generalization. What about the peasants' revolt, or the women's march on Versailles? And there are lots of protest movements today that aren't labeled based on identity, such as most of the worldwide protests against Trump.